"Baker, Kage - The Literary Agent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

Steven gaped at him a moment before responding. "I was wrong. I apologize. You may or may not be the Devil, but you're most assuredly a Yankee."
"No, no, I'm a dream. Anyway. People are crazy about these photo-plays, they'll watch anything we shoot. We've adapted all the great works of literature already. Shakespeare, Dickens, all those guys. So now, my masters are looking for new material, and since you're _such_ a famous and successful writer they sent me to ask if you'd be interested in a job."
"I see." Stevenson leaned back, stretching out his long legs and crossing them. "Your masters want to adapt one of my wonderful adventure stories for these photo-plays of theirs?"
"Uh, actually, we've already done everything you wrote. Several times."
"I should damned well hope I got royalties, then!"
"Oh, sure, Louis, sure you did. You're not only famous, you're rich. Anyway what my masters had in mind was you coming up with something completely _new_. Never-before-seen. Just like all your other stuff, you know, with that wonderful Robert Louis Stevenson magic, but different. Exclusively under contract for them."
"You mean they want me to write a play?" Stevenson looked intrigued.
"Not exactly. We don't have the time. This dream isn't going to last long enough for you to do that, because it's a matter of historical record that you're only going to lie here another -- " Joseph consulted his timepiece again, " -- forty-three hours before you're found and nursed back to health. No, see, all they need you to do is develop a story _treatment_ for them. Four or five pages, a plot, characters. You don't have to do the dialogue; we'll fill that out as we film. We can claim it's from long-lost notes found in a locked desk you used to own, or something."
"This is madness." Stevenson sipped his tea experimentally.
"Delirium. But what have you got to lose? All you have to do is come up with a concept and develop it. You don't even have to write it down. I'll do that for you. And to tell you the honest truth -- " Joseph leaned down confidentially, " -- this is a specially commissioned work. There's this wealthy admirer of yours in the place I come from, and he's willing to pay anything to see a _new _Robert Louis Stevenson picture."
"Wouldn't he pay more for a whole novel? I could make one up as we go along and dictate the whole thing to you, if we've got two more days here. You'd be surprised at how quickly stories unfold when the Muse is with me." Stevenson squinted thoughtfully up at the stars through the branches of the oak tree.
Joseph looked slightly embarrassed. "He's ... not really much of a reader, Louis. But he loves our pictures, and he's rich."
"You stand to make a tidy sum out of this, then."
"Perceptive man, Mr. Stevenson."
Stevenson's eyes danced. "And you'll pay me millions of money, no doubt."
"You can name your price. Money is no object."
"Dollars, pounds or faery gold?" Stevenson began to chuckle and Joseph chuckled right along with him in a companionable manner.
"You've got the picture, Louis. It's a dream, remember? Maybe I've got a trunkful of gold doubloons here, or pieces of eight. I'm authorized to pay you _anything_ for an original story idea."
"Very well then." Stevenson gulped the tea down and flung the cup away. "I want a cigarette."
The other man's chuckle stopped short.
"You want a cigarette?"
"I do, sir."
"You want -- Jeepers, Louis, I haven't got any cigarettes!"
"How now? No cigarettes? This is my dream and I can have anything I want. No cigarette, no story." Stevenson laced his slender fingers together and smiled.
"Look, Louis, there's something you should know." Joseph bent forward seriously. "Cigarettes are not really good for your lungs. Trust me. They'll make your cough worse, honest. Now, look, I've got gold certificates here for you."
"It's cigarettes or nothing, I say."
"But I tell you I can't _get_ any -- " The other seized the hair at his temples and pulled in vexation. Then he halted, as if listening to an inner voice. "Hell, what can I lose?"
He opened the lid of the trunk and brought out his pad of yellow lined paper. Casting a reproachful glance at Stevenson he scribbled something down and fed his message into the invisible slot. Almost immediately the reply emerged. He scanned it, wrote something more and fed it back. Another quick reply. Stevenson watched all this with amusement.
"He's got a wee devil in the box poking his letters back out," he speculated.
"All I want is to make the man happy," Joseph retorted. "Fame, I offer him. Riches, too. What does he do? He turns capricious on me. Lousy mortal." He read the next communication and his eyes narrowed. Hastily he backed away from the trunk, putting a good eight feet between himself and it.
"What's amiss now?" inquired Stevenson. "Old Nick's in a temper, doubtless."
"I'd cover my ears if I were you," replied the other through gritted teeth. As if on cue the trunk gave a horrific screech. It shook violently; there was a plume of foul smoke; there was one last convulsive shudder: then a cigarette dropped from the orifice, very much the worse for wear, mashed flat and in fact on fire.
Joseph ran forward and snatched it up. He blew out the flame and handed the smoldering mess to Stevenson.
"There," he snapped. "It's even lit for you. Satisfied?"
Stevenson just stared at it, dumfounded.
"Smoke the damned thing!" said the other. Stevenson took a hasty drag while Joseph bent over the trunk and did some diagnostic procedures.
"Did we break Hell's Own Postbox?" ventured Stevenson after a moment.
"I hope not," the other man said. "And I hope you're doing some thinking about story ideas."
"Right." Stevenson inhaled again. The cigarette did not draw well. He eyed it critically but thought it best not to complain. "Right, then. What sort of story shall we give them? A romance, I dare say."
"Sex is always popular," conceded Joseph. He stood, brushed off his knees and took up the yellow lined pad. "Go on."
"Right. There's a woman. She's a beauty, but she labors under some kind of difficulty. Perhaps there's a family curse, but _she's_ pure as the snows of yesteryear. And there's a fellow to rescue her, a perfect gentle knight as it were, but he's knocked about the world a bit. Not a hapless boy at any rate. And there's an older fellow, a bad 'un, a dissolute rake. Byronic."
"Not very original, if you'll pardon my saying so," remarked Joseph, though he did not stop writing.
"No, I suppose not. How many ways are there to write a romance? Let's make it a woman who's the bad 'un. Tries to lure the hero from the heroine. There's a thought! A sorceress. Metaphorically speaking. Perhaps even in fact. Wouldn't that be interesting?"
"Sounding good." The other man nodded as he wrote. "Where's all this happening, Louis?"
"France. Medieval France."
"So this is a costume drama."
"A what? Oh. Yes, silks and velvets and whitest samite. Chain mail and miniver. And the sea, I'm sure, with a ship standing off the coast signaling mysteriously. To the beauteous wicked dame, who's a spy! Build this around some historical incident. Put the Black Prince in it. Maybe she's a spy for him and the hero's a Frenchman. No, no, no -- the British public won't take that. On the other hand, this is for the Yankees, isn't it?"
"Sounding good, Louis, sounding really good." The other tore off his written sheet with a flourish. "Let's just feed it into the moviola and see what winds up on the cutting room floor."
"I'm sure that means something to you, but I'm damned if I know what," said Stevenson, watching as the sheet was pulled into the trunk. "How does it do that?"
Joseph did not answer, because the sheet came spewing back at once. He pulled it forth and studied it, frowning.